Recently Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail service have applied more improvements in function and overall quality to regain client market share from rival – Gmail. In this article, we will come together to learn about some of the positive changes from Hotmail service in this war.

First is the addition of the new mouse and keyboard shortcuts, which previously have not been available in consumer based Web Email clients (GMAIL included). For example, users can right-click on the email to get options like Reply, Reply all …:

Additionally, you can now change Hotmail over to use the exact shortcut hotkeys that you might be already acquainted with in Gmail or Yahoo Mail; certainly something handy if you’re one of the claimed “millions” that has switched to Hotmail.

To go along with the new keyboard shortcuts, there are a couple new mouse shortcuts too. At the top-right of email messages you’ll now find a drop-down menu that allows you to Reply, Reply all, or Forward the message.

There were also some new features added in terms of personalization. You can now set a default font for all emails that you compose. And, you can add a default personalized signature to all of your emails. This feature may have been around in some form, but it has been greatly enhance and now supports rich text.

Another notable new feature is the recovery of emails that were deleted. You won’t have to worry about accidently clicking the delete button ever again since those emails can now be brought back.

Lastly, they’ve fixed how the Back button works in your internet browser. Before it would leave you stuck in an endless recycle of the same page, but now it actually goes backwards to a previous page.

However, there are a few areas which needs improvement if Microsoft wants to compete with Gmail: